As Fred mentioned, the vast majority of Linux distros come with the QT and GTK. Furthermore, there is a GTK toolkit for Windows, too!

So, for example, you can install an Integrated Development Environment which allows you to code in several languages, compile your code, and use a toolkit to create GUI software, all from one “application” (often an application with optional plugins).

I haven’t coded GUI software myself, but I believe one example is “jEdit”.

It’s true that tech people/students are the “ripe” market for a cross-platform technology (and might I add *open format*) to allow us to read, search, and annotate textbooks and technical manuals on mulitple computers.

One foray into this area was OSoft’s dotReader (which unfortunately has seemed to halt development). Besides switching to an open format, you could buy a book once and read it on multiple computers using your personal, private key. If you lost it, you could download the book again from a shopping cart.

It seems there must be some way to combine an open, XML-based format with plugins to allow verifying DRM keys or something. (For example, the DRM key could allow you to *open* the file/package with your DRM-enabled software, an inside is a book in an open, standard format *contained*.)

The reason for this is to allow *non-DRM* books to be downloaded and re-used with impunity and **WITHOUT dependence in particular software*, so books can be distributed through multiple channels. Meanwhile, publishers who want to **protect** their intellectual property merely need to take a book which uses said **open** format, but packages it with the DRM key as required for various applications for actual distribution.

So both non-DRM and DRM-enabled eBooks are use the same formatting, the DRM-enabled eBook is merely packaged with the DRM key for the appliction to **check** before allowing the user to view it with the application, and to prevent it being viewed in non-DRM applications.

I believe that’s what OSoft was working on, though maybe they didn’t go far enough with that concept.

Think this through further, and a person could buy their DRM key for a book and application directly from the publisher, or register the key with the publisher somehow, so if they want another key (to read the already purchased book) in another DRM-enabled application, they can do that.

O’Reily was giving discounts on ThoutReader books to people who already bought a hard copy.

All I know is, I will **never** buy an eBook that ties me to a particular application. I will never buy a Kindle, or closed-format eBook software. I just buy new or used hard copies.

Also, PDFs are a poor substitute — it’s optimized for print, not flowing, resizable text. An awesome feature of ThoutReader was showing/hiding different levels of text, such as code examples and annotations. You could also search and get a **navigable list** (chapter/section/text block) to easily work with the search results. Those made it **WORTH** using an electronic as opposed to hard copy.

I believe transferability/re-use, software/platform interoperability, accessibility (re: disabilities), and text flow/flexibility/searchability are **key goals** the industry needs to achieve if they really want people to go digital!

Just my two cents — I hope someone in the industry is listening.

See LULU.COM for a much better solution…

Ruben

And big corporations.

But I have to agree that the general public isn’t Linux-aware. Just like there are huge ammounts of people who are not IT-aware, too.

If you do GNOME, the KDE folks come after you. Or vice versa. Or at least that is how it seemed to be. Is it still like that?

In my previous development endeavours with Linux (and other *nix environments) I’ve used GTK+, because it is GPL and widely available. I may be a little biased because I’ve used Gnome for a long long time (when I’m not on my mac) and have been a part of the dev team for a while – In fact, I’m working with Gnome and Google on a project that’ll launch in some days. But I do consider it the best widget toolkit for linux.

That said, why not look at the GTK documentation? It’s pretty easy to develop with, there’s hooks for a lot of programming languages and it is definitely a growing market you may want to explore with VS.

Good luck! Thanks again for your input, too!

As for the Linux question (and the main reason I am posting)…What UI toolkit? This has been the confusing question to me. I think that is the major question that any app developer has to answer first. Any thoughts?

I’m not impressed by their prices, I’m impressed by their approach to the web-application world by doing a client-side application that connects to a server, much like iTunes does it.

A lot of the cheap books seem to be ones that are already in the public domain and can easily be found for free online.